The Art of Parting

 THE ART OF PARTING

Even tho there are parts of the Earth

I never would have seen

Were it not for you

 

Even tho there are parts of the Music

I never would have heard

Were it not for you

 

Even tho there are parts of the Sea

I never would have smelled

Were it not for you

Even tho there are parts of me

I never would have tasted

Were it not for you

 

Even tho there are parts of you

I never would have touched

 

Were it not for you

 

Were it not for you

I never would have learned

Were it not for you

I never would have learned

I can live without you.

Two Moods: Eclipse and Emergence

Heart eclipse projected onto a frame drum.

ECLIPSE

 

One of the ways

August expressed her sorrow

after her marriage

fell apart.

 

Eclipse of the Heart

August O'Connor

San Francisco 1983 

ECLIPSE OF THE HEART 1983

EMERGENCE

On the other hand

August's Knotted Hare 

Capitola 2002

expresses her fondness for every kind of animal,

her delight in performing Celtic music,

Spring flowering,

one more joyous Easter:

our good Lord emerging from the tomb.

 

The Discovery of Anti-time

Jim Rintoul

THE DISCOVERY OF ANTI-TIME

This being the tale

of the future discovery

of what was at first assumed to be

counter-reality,

(and as such did not matter),

but which soon came to be known as anti-time.

 

Because anti-time could be surfed

like any wave,

the implementation

and subsequent proliferation

of anti-time devices

for the home and workplace

made anti-time big business

if you could just get your board

in the water in time

moving forward

against a headwind of the future

rushing into the past,

to ride the wave till it crashed

and let time (the undertow of anti-time)

reel you back into the present.

The discovery of anti-time

anti-mattered so much

that time began to matter again,

until it became so cheap to produce

that everyone spent it freely.

 

Jim Rintoul lives in Santa Cruz, 

was a prominent member of 

the Boulder Creek Bistroscene, 

and has just published  

It Only Laughs When I Hurt 

Aquarian Moon Productions (2024)

Len Anderson (1944 -- 2024)

Len Anderson

LEN ANDERSON (1944 -- 2024)

 

Len Anderson passed away in his own bed on Mattison Lane in Santa Cruz early Tuesday morning, January 30, tended by his wife, Elke Maus.

 

Len earned a PhD in physics from UC Berkeley, worked in experimental high-energy physics at Berkeley and in Europe, then switched to industry where he designed sensors for paper-making machines. 

Moving to Santa Cruz in the early 90s, Len developed his talents as a poet, co-founding Poetry Santa Cruz and Hummingbird Press, organizations which sponsored poetry readings, encouraged and published the work of local poets including three books by Len himself: Affection for the Unknowable (2003), Invented by the Night (2011) and The Way Home (2019).

In 1992, Len laid down a memorable mark on the poetry scene with his clever parody of Allen Ginzberg's Howl, the infamous anthem of San Francisco's Beat Generation. Len called his work BEEP crafting it as an anthem of the "BEEP Generation", in which he caricatures the behavior of the programmers and entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley whose efforts gave birth to today's personal computers.

BEEP's opening line

A large part of Len's work deals poetically with spiritual and metaphysical themes. Like myself, Len was for a long time a practicing Roman Catholic.

 

Invented by the Night    p 28

And next, Len imagines for us a back-alley encounter between Science and Mysticism:

 

The Way Home   p 42

 

Modern quantum physics, consciousness and mysticism are not so easy to comprehend. These regions of experience are subtle, obscure, elusive and call out for a correspondingly subtle and sophisticated courtship. One example:

 

Invented by the Night   p 48

 

 Philosophically Len Anderson was a passionate agnostic who flirted playfully in public with the boundaries of human knowledge (as per the title of his first book Affection for the Unknowable). And in Len's books and readings he shamelessly reveals himself as a faithful lover of the Great Mystery. For his wife Elke,  his friends and community, and for fellow seekers after the Mysteries, the death of Len Anderson has left a big hole in the fabric of being.

Affection for the Unknowable   p 11

Invented by the Night   p 68